I like those spots you turn up so where you can’t see the breaking wave from where you kill the engine. Park up on the cliff, at the end of the lane, under the mountain, at the gate… sometimes you can hear it as soon as you get out of the car and sometimes, before you get out of the car.

Fair enough, I don’t know that much about surf mats. I’ve only been riding them since last September which is bugger-all really. After riding various stand-up boards (ones without paddles mind you) for a few decades this shift to riding mats almost exclusively has had me rattled.

There was something rattling around inside my Krypt surfmat. I could feel something gritty in there. I thought it might have been bits of sand, perhaps also some shell grit. Gently rubbing the corner of the mat I could feel hard, gritty lumps. Were these little bits going to poke pin-holes or cuts from the inside? How the heck could this have gotten inside my surf mat? Perhaps the winter hammerings I’d taken in the shorebreak at White Rock here in Dublin? Something had to be done.